On January 13, 2024, in Shanghai, " Blossoms " became popular in many places in Shanghai such as Huanghe Road, Jinxian Road, and Peace Hotel, attracting many tourists to check in and take photos. (Visual China Picture)
Many people use the words "misfire" and "cold" to describe the Spring Festival shows of the past few dramas. In 2024, they failed to replicate previous hits such as "人世" and "Cyclone". However, at the beginning of the year, "Flowers" created a "maximum of 11 commercials in a single episode" investment boom, which continued in Spring Festival dramas such as "South and North".
A film and television self-media wrote an article saying that variety reality shows, which used to frequently create national topics, are now gradually weakening and moving towards circles, while the performance of long-form video platforms relies instead on hit dramas. "The dramas have completely spread to most video platforms traffic c bit".
According to Starlink Interactive data, among the dramas to be broadcast in 2024, urban emotional dramas will still account for the largest proportion, while the proportion of suspense and reasoning genres has increased significantly compared with previous years. Some media said that 2024 may be the year with the most suspense dramas. The year of "volume". Realistic-themed drama series are more subdivided, and the craze for adapting Mao Dun Literature Award-winning works since "In the World" and "Flowers" continues.
A core proposition surrounding the creation of drama series has always been: how to deal with the relationship between drama series and reality? In a video world where conservativeness and avant-garde are juxtaposed, and reality and ideals are reconciled in proportion, do Chinese dramas artistically reflect social reality, or provide imaginative solutions? Is it to continue to multiply itself based on the existing drama industry, or is it to provide a newer and more author-oriented aesthetic?
Southern Weekend interviewed many people in the drama industry, including Yin Hong, vice chairman of the China Film Association, Li Lu, director and producer of dramas such as "In the Name of the People" and "In the World", and Zhang Huiyu, director of the Television Research Center of Peking University , screenwriter Yuan Danzi, and drama critic Li Xingwen, discuss what kind of Chinese dramas we need in the current film and television drama market.
"All cool dramas are about counterattacks in life"
Southern Weekend: overall review of 2023 Chinese dramas, which ones are worth paying attention to?
Li Lu: "Hurious", "Flowers", " The Long Season ", I have watched them all. The current nature of these dramas is exactly the right time for them to be broadcast. Including Taiwanese dramas, such as "Defender of the Eight-foot Gate" are very good and will add color to Chinese dramas.
Li Xingwen: "Hurry Up" at the beginning of is a big hit with a realistic theme that is hard to come by. The number and proportion of our realistic-themed creations are not low, and they are getting higher and higher. They can account for 10% of the entire year's repertoire. to more than 60%-70%. But the real hit, judging from the number of broadcasts and ratings on the Internet, "Cyclone" is almost a unique one.
Premium short drama series have made great progress in 2023. "The Long Season" is a representative of contemporary suspense dramas. "The Silk Case of the Ming Dynasty under the Microscope" and "Under the Busty City" are the top short drama series in ancient costumes. Representative, "Happy Face" can be regarded as a representative of the best short dramas of the Republic of China. Traditional TV dramas are at a disadvantage when competing with short videos and mini-series for eyeballs. However, by being shorter and borrowing lens language and narrative structure from some movies, they can not only retain the story capacity that dramas should have, but also have enough content. Pay attention to the audio-visual language, so that it can compete with micro-short dramas and short videos for a long time. I think high-quality short series are the direction or the only way out for the entire drama industry.
Yuan Bullet: " three-body " is quite surprising. It is a small milestone breakthrough that a domestic science fiction drama can be filmed like this. "The Long Season" has distinct regional characteristics, a very strong audio-visual language impact, including the actors' performances, the shaping of the overall atmosphere, and a review of the intertwined history of the Northeast region and the fate of the characters in the 1990s, which is condensed and vivid. "Flowers" is also very good. It really shows the appeal of style and aesthetics. It proves that domestic dramas can do a lot more in terms of aesthetics. It dominates the telling of the entire story with an aesthetic style that is much higher than that of conventional TV dramas.
In "Hurry", the villain Gao Qiqiang.(Data map)
Southern Weekend: Anti-corruption and anti-crime dramas are a genre that has produced relatively good dramas in recent years. In the past few years, there have been popular works such as "In the Name of the People" and "Anti-Gangster Storm". In 2023, "Hurry" The number of views and discussions is outstanding. What do you think of the upsurge of attention caused by this drama?
Yin Hong: Anti-crime campaign involves social fairness and justice, which is closely related to everyone. Secondly, anti-black dramas have a certain degree of social criticism and are an outlet for people to express their dissatisfaction with some realities. The more important feature of "Hurry Up" is that the character played by Zhang Songwen overwhelms the positive characters, deepening the social depth of "good people turning bad".
Zhang Huiyu: "Crazy" has the genre of anti-corruption and anti-crime, but also has the characteristics of a cool online drama. All Internet dramas are about counterattacks in life. At the same time, it is also a period drama. "Rush", "The Long Season" and "Flowers" all focus on the historical period of the late 1990s and the beginning of the new century. My general summary is "returning to the 1990s" or "reconstructing the 1990s", in some sense It has become a mirror image of current popular culture and social and cultural psychology. "Hurry", "Long Season" and "Flowers", three stories, three areas and three aspects. "Hurry" presents the personal history of blackness in a specific era, "Bloom" is about blooming flowers, and "The Long Season" reflects an era of searching for the truth, revenge, and healing, healing, and healing of trauma.
Southern Weekend: "Hurry" spends a lot of space talking about the growth history of a villain. What do you think of this?
Li Xingwen: The prerequisite for the success of police dramas is that the villain must be powerful enough. Returning to the " Black Hole " and " Black Ice " 20 years ago, the dramatic charm of Nie Mingyu played by Chen Daoming in "Black Hole" Overpowering the righteous male lead, the drug lord played by Wang Zhiwen in "Black Ice" also overpowered the righteous policewoman played by Jiang Wenli. In "In the Name of the People", Qi Tongwei is also a villain that is very impressive to everyone. Even the most recognized Li Dakang can be regarded as a positive character, but he is somewhat both good and evil. On the other hand, if the positive characters are not allowed to have flaws, it will be difficult to compete with the villains in terms of artistic richness. What everyone recognizes is the artistic image, not Gao Qiqiang's evil deeds.
In the TV series "Black Hole" broadcast in 2001, Chen Daoming played Nie Mingyu, the son of the deputy mayor and a well-known young entrepreneur in the province, and he was also the largest local underground gang leader. (File picture)
The dramas have become shorter and the water injection has become less
Southern Weekend: In 2023, some big IP dramas received a mediocre response, but some low-cost or short dramas received more praise. How to deal with this phenomenon? ?
Li Xingwen: high-quality short series are the ultimate outlet and evolutionary direction of the drama industry. Since 2023, some new indicators have appeared in our evaluation of drama series, and we pay more attention to the "completion rate", which means that after opening it, you don't click on it for 3 seconds, but you have to watch it for a while after clicking on it; another one is called "Average views per episode", long dramas and short dramas cannot compare with the total views, but a high number of views for a single episode shows that the popularity is high enough.
If you are poor, you will want to change. Those long soap operas must have died long ago. In the past, the 70, 80, 50 or 60-episode long series all had water-filled plots. Even if more than ten or twenty episodes were deleted, there would be no real loss of information.
Yin Hong: In recent years, short and medium-sized dramas have become hits almost every year. If the play is short, its narrative intensity will be higher, there will not be so much water injection, there will not be so many clues, it will be more concentrated, and you can concentrate more on creation. Why are there so many suspense works? It is very difficult to maintain suspense for thirty or forty episodes, but in ten or twenty episodes, a suspense drama has just the right thickness and sufficient intensity.
Southern Weekend: In 2023, the performance of suspense dramas is still very impressive, such as "The Long Season", the suspense theme is matched with the Northeast region. This type of drama is quite common in the past two years. Why has this drama won so much praise? ?
Yin Hong: In fact, suspense is no longer a genre. I think it is a narrative method or a theme. In the past, suspense dramas revolved around a case to develop the main narrative clues, but in 2022 and 2023 movies and TV series, a kind of "social suspense" appeared. Suspense serves as an introduction, but it reflects social reality and is social plus suspense. sexual works. In other words, the case is not its core appeal, nor is it the core part that drives the story. The same is true for movies, including "The Vanishing She", "Walking Through the Angry Sea" and "The Third Brigade". There is a suspense as the advancement of the drama, but more attention is paid to the fate of people and society, people and society. The relationship between them has a wider social and literary nature.
Li Xingwen: The narratives of suspense dramas are now becoming more and more complex. The original single linear narrative and the traditional surprise and first glance no longer work, and even violence and bloodshed are no longer advisable. "The Long Season" is the most typical. It is a three-line narrative. The three timelines are very complicated and intertwined. The structure is relatively complex, which is also a sign of the film series.
Li Lu: The creator and production team of "The Long Season" have accurately identified the style of this play, which is very flavorful. The director also has accurate and diverse narrative techniques and musical interpretation, integrating literary vocabulary, and every The actors were all found very accurately. Therefore, there are rules that can be summarized: for any drama to break the circle or succeed, it must be that all the creative elements are correct. If one of the links is wrong, it will be impossible to break the circle.
Northeast China in the 1990s. (Visual China Picture)
What can a film director bring to the table when he makes a series?
Southern Weekend: film directors have entered the drama series, such as Wong Kar-wai's "Flowers", Feng Xiaogang's "Echo", and Zhang Dalei's "Moses on the Plains". The broadcast results and audience reputation are mixed. Film directors have their own experience in filming dramas. Any dissatisfaction?
Li Lu: When a film director makes a TV series or a movie, there is no obvious definition. This person is a movie maker, and that person is a TV series maker. Moreover, many directors originally made TV series. Nowadays, domestic TV dramas are making rapid progress. When film directors shoot dramas, they will provide a model for improving the quality of TV dramas. For example, "Flowers" pays great attention to details such as light and shadow, texture, costumes, props, etc. Because the big screen will show more details, the audience's aesthetic needs are now getting higher and higher. , it is a trend that the narrative style and light and shadow style of drama series are gradually approaching feature-length movies.
Yin Hong: cannot be generalized. The movie relies on scene scheduling and high-intensity jumping plots, so it relies on momentary bursts to connect, leaving very little space for the characters to develop. A character may only have 5 or 10 sentences in a movie, and the number of times he appears does not add up to many, so the calculation of scenes, climaxes, and every turning point must be very precise. But TV dramas are different. TV dramas unfold episode by episode amid complex character relationships and long chains, not one episode at a time. Therefore, it is particularly important whether it can create character relationships that arouse the audience's emotions.
Movies and TV dramas are two different narrative systems. Wong Kar-wai's entire narrative system is completely cinematic, but "Flowers" basically blends his film-based narrative system with the TV drama's narrative system, thus creating a A very good piece. Everyone is a special case. I don’t think there is a general rule that a film director can do well in making a TV series. It still depends on whether the two systems can be effectively converted.
Stills from "Ci of Daming Palace".(File picture)
Southern Weekend: In the past, TV series such as "Daming Palace Ci" had the author's style, but now it seems difficult to find dramas with high aesthetic requirements. Does this mean that aesthetics have deteriorated?
Yuan Bullet: also shortens the creation time. The rapid changes in the market and policy adjustments have led to everyone wanting to complete a work faster. From the early stage of creation of a work, from collecting stories, to creating scripts, to shooting, to post-editing, the duration of all types of work has been shortened.
The second reason is a kind of cultural dissociation. The era (drama series) before ours was relatively thicker, more focused on restoring historical reality, and being loyal to the details of life. We would see a large number of realistic works, and there was not so much hesitation in expressing them. Now we are more reflective or diversified about our own culture, and more and more personalities are joining in, so its values will be a global expression. It is hard to imagine that there could be works like "The Three-Body Problem" and "Under the Stranger" in the TV drama market in the past. Its audience did not exist twenty years ago. Such dramas represent the continuous iteration and upgrade of the aesthetics and values of the times. Because
has to cater to this rapidly changing value system, some aesthetic pursuits have been obscured or shelved. It would be great to catch up with this wave of values. The calm and heavy aesthetic system of the past cannot solve all the current problems. Today's dramas actually face and have to present more things than in the past, and there are also more technical means.
Southern Weekend: In the entire Chinese-language drama market in the past two years, why are period dramas so popular?
Yin Hong: I think good period dramas have a literary foundation, and the same goes for "In the World". The so-called literary nature means the thickness of the characters. The characters are in a specific historical context of the era, and their personal destiny is related to That era had a relationship. This relationship is not one-way, it is not just a story or event, but the fate of a person and a group of people created by a complex society.
Many period dramas only place the story in one era, but these people are the same wherever they are placed. They have become functional and symbolic good guys, bad guys, righteous people, unjust people, and people who are greedy for wealth. , people who are greedy for power, so there is no real sense of the times.
"Sweet love dramas, the real audience space is getting narrower and narrower"
Southern Weekend: Among the urban-themed dramas in 2023, "Go Where the Wind Is" and "Hometown, Come Back Safe" are all about escaping from the front line Stories about urban life or returning from the city. Urban-themed dramas no longer just tell the story of how young people work hard and establish themselves in big cities. How do you view this new change?
Yin Hong: Social life is changing. In recent years, fleeing from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou has become a representative trend and topic. How people find their place in such a social background is a reflection of social psychology. These works have a very strong utopian nature, and escaping from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou may not necessarily mean paradise. The depth of these works is average and relatively simplistic.
Dramas such as "Where the Wind Goes" tell the story of young people escaping from the big city. (File picture)
Yuan Danzhu: The urban theme of has been quite sluggish in the past two years. It is not a very popular track. This is related to the exhaustion of development of some of its themes. After one theme is expressed too much, everyone will be tired. For example, when we were working on "Ode to Joy", we would bring up very fresh topics, but after being expressed in countless urban dramas, nothing touched us. At that time, the image of the "evil old man" appeared in "Everything Is Fine", because before, mom and dad appeared as kind and sacrificial images. For the first time, Su Daqiang appeared, who was both real and ubiquitous, and had never been expressed before. You will be very surprised if you see the image of the "evil old man".
2023 is not so much a change in the direction of urban dramas as it is a change in the living conditions of people in the city. The rapid changes in the ideological trend of urban dramas should be the most obvious among all drama types. Urban dramas are closest to the daily lives of the public, and they show the changes in social issues at the first time.Faced with economic pressure and work pressure, some young people no longer believe in big cities and want to go back to the second tier. They even appear to be "eating on the old", losing culture, and escaping personality, including the manifestation of various social diseases.
When I first entered the industry, most urban dramas still focused on the conflict between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, and whether the couple was having an affair. The audience's enthusiasm for mistress sex has not changed in decades. For a while, the overall concept of urban dramas was completely centered around topics, including "Thirty Only", which was also of this type. What social topics did I want to express, and then how to create characters and stories around it, in order to accommodate more social topics. and discussion.
Southern Weekend: According to Yien data, among the dramas launched in 2023, romance dramas account for 43.3%. "Pretend to Revelation" and " Love Is Only " have good reputations, but some dramas have also encountered "top-level" Love Brain” criticism. What needs to be improved in the presentation of love and marriage in romantic dramas in 2023?
Yin Hong: Generally speaking, the audience space for sweet love dramas like those in the past is getting narrower and narrower. Art provides imaginative solutions to reality, but first it must make everyone feel that this imagination is real. Love (should) have something attached to it, but that something attached is becoming harder and harder to find these days. In the past, there was basically a certain status difference between men and women, and love was achieved by loving and caring for each other. Nowadays, there is no new expression for this kind of drama, and there is no new way for love to settle down in the city. This is not only a problem encountered in creation, but also a problem encountered in life. This reflects a real problem: love is no longer so exciting, and no one even wants to believe in love.
Stills from "It's Just Love". (File picture)
Yuan Danzhu: In the first three to five years of , you often saw dramas about urging marriage. Now you feel that this topic is completely outdated in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, because more and more people think that love and Marriage is no longer an individual’s pursuit and end point in life, especially more women realize this.
Today's relationships are indeed mixed with more and more calculations and calculations. In the past, we were not too brave or ashamed to bring the essence of marriage to the table. In the past, we thought more that marriage must be the result of love, but now more and more people realize that in addition to being related to love, marriage is also a strong binding relationship that involves meticulous cooperation between both parties. As social morality becomes more tolerant, including the strengthening of self-awareness, everyone has been able to face many of the doubts and doubts about love and marriage that have been buried deep in their hearts and discuss them bravely.
As a creator, on the one hand, I think it reflects people's release of themselves, and the diversity of personalities is increasingly recognized; but on the other hand, it is a bit regretful. Because I think there is something particularly beautiful in the yearning and trust for love, and the loyalty, respect and devotion to marriage. If we abandon or deny it so quickly, to a certain extent we are also losing something very important. . As far as love is concerned, I still appreciate works such as "Tokyo Love Story". The characters are running, yearning for love, and pure emotions are worthy of recognition.
“Today’s screenwriters are too much screenwriters”
Southern Weekend: Judging from the works to be filmed and approved in 2023, adaptations of Mao Dun Literary Award-winning works are favored by the market. It seems that the drama market has rekindled the appetite for serious literary works. enthusiasm?
Li Lu: Serious literature has once again aroused the craze for film and television adaptations. "Human World" has indeed played a big role. It is said that many writers have sold out the rights to adapt their novels. Literature serves as the matrix of film and television, which must be a good thing. Many in Hollywood, Japan and South Korea have excellent novel matrix before converting into film and television dramas. But not all literary works are suitable for conversion into film and television dramas, nor can we blindly say what to put on the screen. For many excellent literary works, the obscurity of the text and the fragmentation of characters do not affect their ideological and artistic quality, but they are not suitable for Made into movies and TV series. How to choose depends on the creator's discernment.
The craze for adapting serious literary works that has started since "The World" and "Flowers" continues. (Information picture)
Yin Hong: The current screenwriters are too screenwriters. Literature is mainly about shaping characters. Stories and plots are driven by people, not people who are subordinate to stories and plots. Our movies and TV series divorced from literature and drama before, but now they are looking for literature and drama again. However, in recent years, screenwriters have become more and more screenwriters. They are making up drama instead of starting from the characters and finding the drama formed by the relationship between the characters themselves. Literature is relatively serious and does not have the inevitable requirements of popular popular stories, so it respects human nature more. The relationship between emotion and destiny. This is a good thing. In fact, works such as "The Long Season" and "Flowers" have a strong literary quality at first glance. Each character has tension, his own destiny, and his own character growth history.
Southern Weekend: Taiwanese dramas in 2023 include such acclaimed works as "Defender of the Eight-foot Gate" and "In This Lifetime". What kind of inspiration can the current situation of Taiwanese drama production provide to the creation and filming of mainland dramas?
Li Lu: still needs to be called for all year round, and screenwriters and creators must be loosened. "The Defender of the Eight-foot Gate" was shot very seriously. The discussion of legal issues it expresses does not show off professionalism, but makes people empathize with it. "Naoki Hansawa" is set in finance, while "Defender of the Eight-foot Gate" is set in the legal world. They are in different fields, but they portray all kinds of people in a very three-dimensional, full, expressive and thought-provoking way. Their production cost should not be very high, and they were able to make it like this because they ultimately spent time on the core.
Taiwanese drama "The Defender of the Eight-foot Gate". (Data map)
Yin Hong: It is necessary to carry out normal literary criticism. Any literary and artistic work has more or less defects. I advocate using a constructive attitude to criticize literary and artistic works to help them improve themselves, rather than a knock-down, destructive, or death sentence approach. A healthy and rational environment can ensure that we have more and better works. The Internet has created a noisy world. The louder and shriller the voice is, the wider it spreads. On the contrary, rational voices, tolerant voices, and constructive voices are sometimes drowned. I feel that some online criticism now frequently goes online and slaps people with labels or sticks. This is not normal literary criticism.
Southern Weekend: What are your expectations for the 2024 series?
Li Lu: hopes that 2024 will be a big year for dramas. If there are so many dramas in a year, there are one after another hit movies, and there are good dramas that are hotly discussed in the streets, then it will be called a big year. When I was filming "In the Name of the People", many people thought there was no way this drama could be approved, but in the end the result was good and the society was hotly discussing it. If you haven't finished a project yet, it will definitely not work to tie your hands and feet. If you make a film and touch on some profound topics, then you need to have the greatest common denominator: the audience likes to watch it, and it reflects the profound issues of the times that the audience is concerned about. This requires the creator's extremely high wisdom and responsibility as well as the overall control ability. .
Southern Weekend reporter Pan Xuan
editor-in-chief Li Muyan
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